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... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.
Rebecca West
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Rebecca West
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: December 21
Died: 1983
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Suffragette
Writer
London
England
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield
History
Killings
Never
Instantly
Unnecessary
Followed
Period
Killing
Periods
Necessary
More quotes by Rebecca West
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
Rebecca West
Unfortunately, all gatherings convened for the betterment of the human lot show a tendency to gas themselves, and not with laughing-gas either.
Rebecca West
I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.
Rebecca West
Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.
Rebecca West
one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.
Rebecca West
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
Rebecca West
But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.
Rebecca West
Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.
Rebecca West
There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civilizations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped.
Rebecca West
... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.
Rebecca West
Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
Rebecca West
Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized upon by a madness which forced them to commit the very acts which make it certain that what they dread will happen.
Rebecca West
I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.
Rebecca West
The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.
Rebecca West
A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
Rebecca West
It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
Rebecca West
A good cause has to be careful of the company it keeps.
Rebecca West
Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Rebecca West
The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.
Rebecca West
There are two kinds of imperialists - imperialists and bloody imperialists.
Rebecca West
